COLUMBUS, Ohio – Rich Karlis needed to learn how to kick – so he took off his shoe.

Karlis was a freshman at the University of Cincinnati when the coaches moved him to placekicker, instead of punter. Following the lead of Texas A&M’s Tony Franklin, he started kicking barefoot in an attempt to quickly learn what to do – he hadn’t even played football until his senior year of high school.

“I just figured I’d better try anything,” Karlis said. “I never was a soccer player or anything, so just from a feel standpoint, it helped me learn where to hit the ball on my foot.”

He learned well enough to put in almost a full decade in the NFL, making it to two Super Bowls with the Denver Broncos and later tying the single-game record of seven field goals with the Minnesota Vikings. It was the golden age of the barefoot kicker as Karlis, Franklin, Paul McFadden and Mike Lansford made their livings shaking off frozen footballs, rough playing surfaces and the cleated feet of 300-pound defensive linemen.

Karlis was the last one to hang up his shoe, and since he did so in 1991, no kicker has gone barefoot full-time. Jeff Wilkins of the St. Louis Rams tried it for a couple games in 2002, but wrapped his foot, so Karlis doesn’t consider him to be a barefoot kicker.

“He and I joked about it because he would wear, like, a pad on his foot,” Karlis said. Wilkins would say “‘Hey, I’m going barefoot.’

“Well…almost,” Karlis said with a laugh.

The disappearance of barefoot kickers is surprising to McFadden. With four of the 28 kickers being barefoot for a time in his career, he expected the number to keep growing, instead of falling off to nothing.

McFadden said that the advantage to him was the control that kicking barefoot allowed.

“It just gave you a much better sense of the ball,” McFadden said. “I always said kicking with the shoe was like trying to pick up a dime with a pair of gloves on.”

And according to McFadden, he never considered going back.

“No, never,” McFadden said. “I had to kick one preseason game with a shoe because of a toe injury and hated it.”

But according to Minnesota Vikings kicker Paul Edinger, there are two reasons for not kicking barefoot: It hurts and the shoes now give just as much feel as kicking barefoot.

“I never thought of doing it on the team,” Edinger said. “I’ve done it on the beach a few times and it didn’t feel that good.”

As for the shoes, kickers are wearing specialized shoes at a younger age – such as soccer cleats instead of football cleats – and the shoes can be fitted well enough that it doesn’t feel much different, Edinger said.

He says he wears his kicking shoe a half-size smaller than normal and forces the shoe to mold to his foot, giving him “the feel of kicking off your feet.”

And wearing a shoe does help avoid some of the problems Karlis ran into.

“We practiced on the turf at Cincinnati during the training camp and it got a little hot on that turf, so I’d have a little ice pack to stand on between kicks,” Karlis said.

The 1987 AFC Championship Game was the other extreme. The weather was cold in Cleveland and the field was so torn up that there wasn’t any grass left.

It didn’t bother him that much. Karlis hit his most famous kick in that game, capping the legendary “The Drive” game with a 33-yard field goal in overtime to send the Broncos to the Super Bowl.

But even Karlis said that when he teaches kicking now, he teaches it with a shoe on because it gives the advantage of added traction during the approach.

So the barefoot kicker has gone the way of the single wing and helmets without facemasks, but the legacy will live on. After all, how many players can say they have a replica of one of their extremities in the Pro Football Hall of Fame?

“The Hall of Fame wanted something from me (after the seven field-goal game) and I was like “well, I don’t have a shoe for you”, said Karlis. “So the PR guys had the idea to have a plaster cast made,” which is still on display at the Hall of Fame.